Discussion summary
Discussions about 'Project Hail Mary' include critiques of its plot and characters, with some mentioning the portrayal of white savior tropes. Opinions vary from enjoyment to criticism of the film's execution.
What the discussion says
- Some find the story predictable and criticize character development.
- Others appreciate the science fiction elements and plot twists.
- Several comments mention the portrayal of the protagonist and themes of heroism.
“It's pretty bad, using tech we don't understand.”
“Gosling would have made a nice stand-in for Rocco Siffredi.”
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- Hacker News
- Those interested in this might also like my "Project Hail Mary Stellar Map" at:
https://dwheeler.com/essays/project-hail-mary-map.html
My page shows a stellar map (from the viewpoint of Polaris) and a sky chart showing the key stars from Earth's viewpoint.
Source code (MIT license for my stuff) is at: https://github.com/david-a-wheeler/plot-stars
by dwheeler - I had sudden memories of playing Frontier: Elite 2.
I wanted to go to Sol, buy luxury goods...and take them to Barnards Star
by jimnotgym - For anyone who enjoys this, exploration in "Elite: Dangerous" (for which you need to be neither elite nor dangerous, exploration is peaceful) might be enjoyable for you as well.
From the wiki: Elite Dangerous has a 1:1 scale simulation of the Milky Way galaxy based on real-life scientific principles, scientific data and theories. It includes around 400 billion star systems, modeled on actual galactic charts. Planets and moons rotate and orbit with 1:1 scale in real-time, thus constantly changing a system's environment
by ceheaaf - For other software engineers thinking of following in Andy Weir's footsteps and writing a novel, I put together my guide to self-publishing using software tools and techniques here: https://frequal.com/forwriters/by TeaVMFan
- I can also recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FT-oz9aZU4 Time Dilation Visualized (by The Overview Effekt).
It talks about the distances and times involved and how time compression and astrophage infection rates work out. As a fan of the book and the movie it was nice to see the actual 3D star chart of everything. (warning: there may be spoilers there)
by rdtsc - I am so happy this movie did great, the book was great
Similar to me books: Bobiverse, Long Way To A Small Angry Planet
I'm not a heavy reader
This site is cool, I want to get to know stellar navigation stuff for astrophotography watching a video like this where they pull up star charts to point the telescope at it pretty cool https://www.youtube.com/live/TexqPMQMyZg?si=oEnvrxW21-D0VXGV...
Tangent I'll throw in here, I never get the fabric folding gravity well diagrams as it seems to have a "down" direction, I guess it looks like it's down since it's a slice but the effect is an inward sphere?
by ge96 - Just FYI the sizes of the planets, stars, and their orbits are not to scale at all. To get an idea of how empty space is, there are 63,360 inches in a mile, and 63,239 astronomical units in a light-year. So if you scaled everything down such that Earth was 1 inch from the Sun, Neptune would be 30 inches away and Alpha Centauri would be 4 miles away.
If you were using a 4k display and had the Sun and Alpha Centauri visible at opposite sides of the display, the orbit of Neptune would be in the same pixel as the Sun.
by ggreer - Hi there! This is Val, I made the star chart. There's a little "about" blurb you can open in a modal on the site, but I wanted to mention that this demo uses the amazing GAIA DR3 dataset from ESA. I have a Python script that renders all 1.8+ billion stars into custom images, which is what I used for the skybox. The star positions and colors all use the GAIA data (save for a few bright stars not in the set). The data is amazing, and if you have any interest in doing some fun projects with open data I recommend checking it out: https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dr3by speleo